I am having issues with transferring my chat history from my old Iphone 11 to my FP5. Have reset back to Factory settings twice now to follow the step by step instruction by Whatsapp but I do not get the option to load history when opening Whatsapp on my FP5 after the transfer is completed. I am not sure if I did something wrong, the setup does ask me for an ITunes password which I don’t have and never set up so I skipped that step. It does however go through the whole Whatsapp preparation process so it does not seem to affect that.
I know there are workarounds but I am not sure if it is worth the effort oor wether I should simply accept a clean slate in Whatsapp.
I don’t have FP5 but I did many transfers on WhatsApp on several phones. Usually the factory reset is not needed, but each time I needed to create a backup in the cloud and afterwards reinstall the app. Only when reinstalling, it asks for the cloud backup. I hope that helped.
Thanks for your response, the cloud backup option only works when staying on the same platform and is not supported when switching from Apple to Android as Android cannot access iCloud where the Whatsapp backup is stored.
I followed the official guide stated in this thread, the qr does appear and data transfers seems succesful up to the point where I should open WhatsApp and load the history by logging in with my phone number. It loads groups but the threads are empty.
I could not start the transfer manually, there should be a way to restart the wizard in case the transfer was not successful but I could not find the Google backup app mentioned.
I’m actually quite surprised there’s a way at all. As I have stopped using WhatsApp in 2019, I didn’t expect it’s possible to move accounts between platforms. This whole platform-moving stuff is nontrivial, as it’s not even simple to identify an app on Google Play given an App on iOS, as there are no shared identifiers whatsoever. And then both platforms handle data storage differently, and even the app’s implementation might differ between platforms. Hope you can figure it out!
I tried once more and this time I was successful. Did another factory reset and this time it worked. Unfortunately not sure why it did not work earlier but I did make sure the last time that there were no interruptions in the transfer. The only advise I have is to keep trying, make sure you disable the auto screen lock as wel as iPhones feature that sets time limits on apps.
I‘m having the same issue. It’s so frustrating. I’m just about to send back my Fairphone 5 as I just Whatsapp for work and I just can’t work without the chat history.
I have already reset the device 4 times to factory settings and did the whole transfer again. The transfer just does not load the data from my iphone. I see all the chats but without content.
Hi @lucius_B,
As you’ve already tried a lot and seem to be in desperate need for the WA chat history it might be time to try out different paths.
I don’t know if it works for transferring WA history from an iPhone to an Android device but still I’d recommend to give it a try:
In short:
Create a WhatsApp backup on your iPhone and copy the data to the correct place on your FP5.
Then initially start WhatsApp there…
The only thing that pops to mind are small interruptions during the process that causes whatsapp to close during the whole transfer. I once had whatsapp run into the maximum time limit that I had set earlier. Also definitely make sure your Iphone screen stays on all the time (turn off the option that locks the screen at inactivity)
Make sure your wifi is stable, that sort of things. I did a backup of all chats in txt format as well.
What’s important is that Whatsapp has(or had, I don’t know if it still exists) a bug with this method: It needs file permission before starting for the first time, otherwise this method fails. Maybe that’s also the problem with direct transfer method failing?
In the meantime… anyone has any other tips or tricks to get this sorted out?
I tried everything already 6 times without luck, trying to transfer from iPhone 11 to FP5.
In WhatsApp all contacts, group memberships, profile picture etc. copy well, but the chat history doesn’t. I really don’t want this to be the reason to return the FP…
Thanks! Fair point. With ‘everything’ I meant the whole procedure as described by WhatsApp. HERE
I tried it a few times with full factory reset, I also tried it without full factory reset. I also tried it with only whatsapp to be transferred. Unfortunately no luck so far.
Yes I did. Thanks a lot. I’ll try a few more times, this time with my fingers crossed ;). Or with the Smart Switch app, although I think the app checks wether it’s a Samsung. Otherwise I’ll go for a paid App option, perhaps the MobileTrans app.
The problem seemed to be the password of the ‘itunes’ back-up.
The Android stock software migration doesn’t give feedback whether the ‘iTunes’ password is correct or not. The paid migration App MobileTrans does. It kept saying mine was incorrect, even though I entered it correct. So I removed the password by removing all back-ups on MacOS and made a new back-up without encryption. Afterwards I was able to do the iOS → Android transfer process with the free Android migration software.